Talk:Second Life

Second Life is a featured article, which means it has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the WikiFur community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.

"and the game world has mixed age ratings from PG to Mature." -- s/age/content/i;

Second Life is technically unable to fit into the MMORPG category, as by itself, it is not a roleplaying game. Rather, it is a platform that allows games to be built within its framework, and is a bit better classified as a richly graphical multiple user chat kingdom (fiefdom, lol? :P) than an MMORPG. Some lean so far as to just call it a metaverse, which isn't that far of a stretch.

Each user who joins Second Life gets an unique referral link. Giving this link to people who have yet to sign up, and getting them to do so credits the user with a certain amount of Linden Dollars -- the in-world currency.

L$1000: Basic account signup completion.

L$2000: Premium account signup completion.

Note that Joining Second Life now is free, they give you L$350 for starting.

Speaking of the currency, one can buy or sell their Linden Dollars (L$) via Gaming Open Market. Exchanges are done in blocks of L$1000, and as of this writing (20 August 2005), are exchanging at roughly USD$3.75. There are some furs who do this with the earnings from their businesses (Custom avatar creation, Generic avatar vending, etc), turning it into profit that allows them to do whatever they feel like, up to, and including starting their own Island(s).

Sadly, GOM was closed by its creators when Linden released the Lindex.

Islands are user-owned simulators within Second Life. As of this edit, there are a number of furry-owned or themed Islands in Second Life:

Taco

Information about ownership here (Arito Cotton, Evangeline Suavage?)

This sim has a slightly cartoony feel to it, and is the home of Dwellget, a department store that parodies heavily on Target.

Furnation Worlds

This is a pair of simulators (Prime and Alpha) run by the crew at Furnation (soon to be Anthronation).

These sims have a heavy dose of influence from the Stargate series. Prime's telehub is a gigantic gate build from the series.

The Forest, Tiger Creek

The Forest was the first Furry oriented island in Second Life. (More info on owners, please. Spade Richlieu?)

This sim had an abundance of trees, but was a bit too bare to really own up to its name, if asked by some.

This sim suffered from severe lag issues in the beginning, as it was a prime hangout to many furs, which led to the island being full at peak times.

In its first months, it earned at least one dwell award (money given to people who rake in the most dwell (butt hours) each month by Linden Lab -- The entire island earned one of the awards for January 2005, which offset the first month's island fee by about half in this case).

The Forest eventually came under Anshe Chung's ownership. Anshe Chung seems to be a source of teh_dramas to both furries and humans aline in Second Life. Anshe added Tiger Creek as sort of an overflow island. It, too, is furry-themed, and linked to the South side of The Forest.

The Forest and Tiger Creek are now part of what many call AnsheLand (Mostly out of dislike for its owner. Its proper name is actually Dreamland), a chunk of about 35 to 40 linked islands in the far northwest region of the Grid.

Maybe it can be mentioned that with very few exceptions, when an update for the Second Life client is released, it literally becomes mandatory to upgrade your own client to the new release if you wish to access the SL world. And also, these updates being mandatory can be the most subtle annoyance the game has because they don't give you a choice but to get the new update even if it 'breaks' your ability to connect because of having a card that it suddenly doesn't like anymore. Further discussion, as technical as it is, would relate such compatability breaks as being due to the card not being fully supported in the first place, or possible due to updates in the OpenGL code (which may not be a very likely possability). This means that if a user's client is unable to log in after updating because its hardware detection says your card isn't supported by that version anymore, there are no older versions that can be used which will work on that system. That leaves the user the responsability to gte hardware that is compatible.

Being relatively new to Wikifur, and Wiki-* in general, I am not quite up to snuff on terms and such. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, there are things called 'Projects' that are basically collective efforts at creating/improving certain areas of a wiki. An idea that occurs to me is to start one of these 'wikiprojects', focused on the furry aspects of SL. I'll probably get it started once I get the hang of the relevant areas of Wikicode. Any thoughts on this? KaloFoxfire 21:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a neat idea. You probably wouldn't be able to get it going on Wikipedia due to their verifiability and (increasingly) notability requirements, but it'd be welcome here. I'm tempted to go over and see the stuff on Second Life for myself, but if you know a lot about it and are willing to organize efforts to write about it, then that would be a great help. :-) --GreenReaper(talk) 06:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, GreenReaper. They were very encouraging :). Again, I'm still learning the ways of the Wiki, but I think I've got the hang of enough to get us started. Also, I'm probably counting chickens before they hatch, but if word gets spread around the SL furry community, we could be welcoming some new WikiFurries before long. We could draw them in with the idea of writing a few lines about their character or group, and before they know it, BAM, they're hooked. But again, I'm getting ahead of things. KaloFoxfire 15:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a good plan. Why'd you think we're so welcoming of entries to Category:People? ;-)

I think we already have a house billboard advertisement in Teen SL - if you know of any good ways of getting the word out in the main SL community that would be great. Every bit helps. --GreenReaper(talk) 05:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

An idea that occurs to me is to put up some paid advertising in the furry areas. One area that appeals to me in particular is the FurNation WorldsSandbox. I have some spare $L lying around, so I'd be willing to finance the advertising to some extent. I'll look into it.

That would be great - let me know if you need any high-resolution logo imagery or the like, or for that matter if it costs too much; I'm sure I can arrange something. As for the sandbox . . . I was there last night! I was messing around with the creation tools and made a lot of wooden spheres. I think I managed to delete them all. :-)

I should probably create something like a WikiFur Contributors (Wikifurries?) group, assuming we can get 3 or more people involved. I've got L$249 and it's burning a hole in my pocket (or would if I had one . . .) --GreenReaper(talk) 20:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

A bit off topic, but I seem to learn how to do something new every time I use the wiki. This time I learned how to link to specific sections in a page (The $L link). Hooray for knowledge. KaloFoxfire 18:53, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

It's great, isn't it? Knowledge is power (and even money in some cases, but the power is the important part ;-). --GreenReaper(talk) 20:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I was too tempted, and made an account. It's . . . pretty darn neat. Getting towards what Active Worlds could have been. --GreenReaper(talk) 10:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I joined SL a while back, and one of the ideas I had was to build an in-world Annex to Wikifur, with direct links, free icons and desktops related to Wikifur, plus buying some ad space on all the mayor Fur locations,... So far, I bought some land for it, but haven't been able to get to it (RL matters,) as for advertisment, Nexxus and Co. are building the new generation ad server which it will be free to advertise on it. ETA: Next week at the earliest. I can keep an eye out when it comes online. Spirou 02:54, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at uBrowser - it's a project by a Linden, with the eventual goal of creating a browser which can be embedded into SL. So when that's finally added in, all you'd have to do is create a browser object and set the home page to WikiFur. -- Siege 10:51, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm looking at a 1024 sqm block of land in Tiger Creek that I can buy at a reasonable initial price from Anshe. The question is, should I? From what I can see I save $7/month if I buy it from her as I don't need a premium account . . . but I am wary. Are there other options for purchasing (preferably furry-friendly land), and if so, what are the pros and cons? --GreenReaper(talk) 12:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Ansche is a business person first and foremost, and while I don't agree with their motives, they're a highly reputable figure and well known in Second Life. You can attempt to get land space in the FurNation areas for free, but it suffers from a similar reputation the FurNation website -- it can be an incredibly frustrating experience attempting to get assistance if you have a problem or need help. It took them nearly two months to finally process the fact I no longer my land in game.

From everything I've heard of Ansche, they're on the ball for their virtual marketplace. --Preyfar 12:22, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did end up buying the land a while back. Slightly annoyed that they subsequently moved The Forest up one region so it's now further away from the place I bought.

I was just reading this interview with her and I noticed this section in particular:

Do you see expanding the business beyond land sales? What other opportunities might there be?

We have moved from land trading to land development to community development. Entire communities. This continent here, called Dreamland, is unique in that it contains several themed and zoned communities. Examples of communities here are German or Japanese communities in Second Life that we are hosting, or lifestyle communities such as furries, gay/lesbian, gothic people.

I find it amusing that the furries come first to mind. :-) --GreenReaper(talk) 23:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

"Although signing up for a new account requires a credit card or an SMS-capable cell phone, current members have the option of changing their billing information in the members area so their membership fees can be deducted through PayPal."

"Even though Second Life requires a credit card or SMS-capable phone, there is no way to tell inside the game how old someone really is."

"Second Life is now free to sign up if you have never attempted to sign up and play before. Otherwise, a basic account will be a once-off fee of US$9.95, which may be paid with a credit card, or a positive PayPal balance."

These sentences were written in separate sections of this article, and as I have no experience with Second Life, I was wondering if anyone could unify them into one short passage somewhere to provide an easier read. I've heard that you need to pay via credit card, and I've also heard you only need the card for ID purposes for the main grid. Cheers. --Madius H. Rat 20:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I noticed edit page of Second Life says "WARNING: This page is 32 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections." --EarthFurst 02:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I saw that the article was very long too. That by itself causes me to hesitate adding useful content to it. Perhaps it's time to do with it what was done with the Muck articles? Split off the Locations and Users into their own categories? Not to mention there are a lot of existing 'people' pages that would fit in a SL users category, my own included. As to locations there are a lot of furry operated places in SL that are sub-sim sized that would be serious clutter to the article as is, but which could easily support their own page.

By example take the Gay Yiff Club, which has an intereting history all of it's own. It used to be a Furcadia place that moved to SecondLife. It has a good following and the place is never empty. It's moved from mainland space into another furry sim, but is still very much it's own thing easily worthy of an article. Food for thought. --WhiteFire 12:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I recommend we trim down the section regarding the fur-friendly islands to smaller sections with links to more detailed articles for the individual areas. For example, The Forest has a summary of the simulator's history which isn't neccessary for this page. That would be better listed under a new article.

Fortunately, I believe it is other people who are copying us.
[1][2] (This one at least credits WikiFur, but without a copy of the GFDL or list of contributors, or at least a link to them, I doubt it's compliant with the GFDL.)

If you are the copyright holder of the text that has been copied, you may be able to file a DMCA notice, or at least get them to follow the GFDL. --Rat 00:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

And it looks like they've changed their content and no longer copy from us. --Rat 07:46, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that someones mentioning a price per land at the list of places. (Alchera, Drachen & Amaru, FurNation Worlds)I believe this is direct advertisement and shouldn't have any place in an article. Either every location has to have those listed, or none. And I would vote for none :) --VirtualFox 07:14, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The creation of the secondlife furry logo is tagged as "Early 2006" in all references of it. Having only just noticed this today, I think that proof of creation date should be obtained. Another furry by the name of "Kilmarac Drago" has a logo he calls "SecondPaw", that he believes he created as he had not seen any logo's similar to it. He stated that since his creation, he has seen it in other locations in various forms and assumed that it was just copied from when it was in use. He tends to not want to create conflict, so has not asked anyone about it, or its creation. When asked, he stated that the date he created the image and uploaded to SL was Mid 2006, and that it had taken him only a matter of an hour or two to make. The only notable difference between his "SecondPaw" and the logo created by Yiffle Yaffle is that his does not have the claw points on it. I know on a personal level that he would not claim to have created the logo if he did not actually do the work himself. He would also not claim to have created it if it was simply a rendering of an existing logo. I think its only fair that credit for the logo should go to the correct person, and therefore this information should be verified. Considering the simplicity of the design, its possible that both furrys created their logos independant of each other.

Suggested merging Second Life (software) into this article, as there is no furry-related content in the software article. However if it were condensed somewhat, it would make a good part of this article for fur fans new to Second Life. --GingerM(Leave me a message) 06:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)